Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) has received the Reserve Bank of India approval for opening a second branch in Bangkok, Chairman and Managing Director M. Narendra has said.
The public sector lender will open the second branch before March-end next year, Narendra told Business Line here.
IOB is the only Indian lender to have a branch presence in Bangkok.
Narendra also said IOB has re-applied to the RBI for establishing its presence at the Dubai International Financial Centre.
A few years back, IOB had roped in Deloitte to devise a strategy for its overseas expansion.
Expansion mode
Narendra told reporters in Visakhapatnam that the bank is in an expansion mode and has set itself a target of opening 400 more branches during the current financial year. Already, 159 brances have been opened. Currently, the bank has 3,059 branches.
"Our focus is on opening more rural branches and taking banking to villages. We have covered 3,000 villages under financial inclusion scheme. There is a still a lot to be done on that count. Till now all the banks put together have covered only half of the six lakh villages in the country and therefore there is a huge challenge ahead and also an opportunity," he said.
Biz target
He said the bank's business - currently Rs 3,89,000 crore - would cross the Rs 4,00,000-crore mark by the end of the current financial year, "but we have set ourselves a stiff target of Rs 4,25,000 crore."
He said the economic downturn is affecting the performance of the banks a bit, and inflation is also a cause for worry.
Narendra said the bank has recruited 4,562 employees recently and 6,500 more would be recruited with the expansion plans.
In Andhra Pradesh, the bank has 240 branches and 30 more are being added during the current financial year. "Our expansion will go on at the same pace during 2014-15 also, and we will add 500 branches all over the country, 50 of them in AP,'' he said.
Currently, the gross NPA is 4.65 per cent and net NPA 2.83 per cent. "We want to bring down the gross NPA to below 3 per cent," he added.